What HoloLens Has That Google Glass Didn’t

I admit that when Microsoft unveiled its holographic computing engine at its Windows 10 event last week, I didn’t pay much attention. Despite some positive press, it felt too much like Google Glass (and skepticism of that platform looks increasingly warranted) and reminded me of many past gee-whiz announcements from Microsoft. (This one comes to mind.)

James McQuivey, principal analyst and vice president at Forrester, suggested that executives should sit up and pay attention to HoloLens. I wasn’t convinced, but when he wrote to me that “holograms are coming fast and are here to stay; ignore them at your distinct, proximate peril” I reconsidered my dismissiveness.

McQuivey, the author of Digital Disruption, agreed to answer this skeptic’s questions about HoloLens, why it matters, and why executives should pay attention. The conversation follows:

HBR: Executives don’t have a lot of time to think about things that are just hype. Is there any reason for them to pay attention to HoloLens?

McQuivey: Yes. As an executive, you care about this because in Forrester’s Technographics survey data, there are 7.2 million adults in the US that have the ideal combination of attributes that makes them early candidates for HoloLens. They like technology, they have an Xbox, they have children, and they have an annual household income of more than $100,000. If Microsoft can persuade even half of them to jump in, that’s 3.6 million consumers, or 45% of the people who bought a Kinect at launch who will try a HoloLens by 2016. And going into 2017, just two years from now, the momentum they will have generated will force executives at your company to sidestep drones, self-driving cars, and robots to focus on this technology. They’ll see by then how it changes the way your customers interact with the products, services, and information that you provide them.

As one former digital agency executive told me after watching Microsoft’s event, “If I were managing a brand, I’d head right to my digital agency and say, ‘What is our plan for holograms?’” She said this even though she admitted she wouldn’t expect them to have an answer. But they would have to have a plan for generating an answer.

Skeptics will say this is Google Glass — largely regarded as a failure — just a couple of years later. What’s different?

Holographic interactions like what Microsoft is suggesting are where every other company from Oculus to Google were ultimately heading, but they haven’t gotten there. The endgame for enhancing our lives with digital visual tools is not virtual reality, it’s this mixed reality. If the glasses can help you accomplish tasks that matter to you, ones you already do, then it’s not just fun, it’s useful. By introducing the idea of holographic computing and baking it into every Windows 10 device from launch forward, Microsoft is offering developers, marketers, and ultimately consumers, completely new ways to do what they already want to do.

Isn’t that what Google promised with Glass, though? I’m not convinced.

Glass was a study in contradictions. On the one hand it was proposing a future where we would have ubiquitous computing on the go. Definitely a thing of the future. But on the other hand, the experience merely put a short list of functions that you can easily do on your phone in front of your face. The apps and functions were too limited, less powerful than your phone, certainly. That’s what made Google easy to ridicule. If you spend all that money to accomplish such a narrow list of tasks, and potentially look silly doing it, then you are not in the future, you’re not even in the present. You might as well be on a feature phone in 2005.

In order to introduce a new technology, you do have to start by helping people accomplish things that they already know they want, as Google was trying. But it has to make those things dramatically easier, more enjoyable, and more useful, which Glass did not. To get to the future from that point, you can then swiftly lead them on to do things they didn’t already know they wanted to do but now seem obvious. That’s precisely how holographic computing will rapidly infiltrate and then take over computing just as touch interfaces did starting with the iPhone.

Doesn’t this face the same ethics and social challenges as Glass? What’s the HoloLens equivalent of the Glasshole?

There is a subtlety here that executives should understand. Glass was only ever intended to be an on-the-go experience. Because Glass couldn’t actually “see” what you are doing, it can’t really be helpful except as a tool for grabbing information when you’re out and about. This is precisely what made Glass vulnerable to the ethical and social issues that dogged it. HoloLens, on the other hand, is not yet designed to be used outdoors. Instead, it’s a tool for doing what you need to do at home and work more effectively. It can only do that because it sees what you see, understands three-dimensional objects and surfaces, and can create virtual experiences for entertainment and productivity purposes in the places where you do most of those things. This opens up hours worth of opportunities for companies to serve customers in those places, privately, where other people won’t judge your eyewear or choices.

So what are some of the killer apps for this kind of holographic interface?

Retail, travel, automotive, financial services, all of these will be obvious fits. When Ikea builds a holographic catalog so that you can drop furniture into your bedroom and see what it would look like, even walk around it, you know you have a game changer. When Allrecipes.com can point to specific cupboards in your kitchen and tell you to retrieve the cocoa, and count out as you measure out tablespoons, you have another game changer. Even in the enterprise, where it’s likely HoloLens will be more useful more quickly, there will be holographic apps for technicians that do maintenance on jets on the tarmac, collaborative 3D design environments for architects, and special headsets for dentists that guide them through tricky extractions. But ultimately, I disagree with the premise of the question: Like the early web, this technology will not generate a killer app but will instead make smaller breakthroughs with existing applications throughout a wider range of industries and companies. Unlike the early web, it will not take a decade for that diffusion to occur.

Why won’t it take that long?

All the pieces are in place. Consumers are ready for new technology — Apple sold 80 million iPads in its first two years, compared to 1 million iPods in its first two years. Studying barriers to consumer adoption has been my passion since before my doctoral studies and I now find myself with very little to study given how rapidly the barriers are falling. But the technology itself is moving faster than before. Connectivity is ubiquitous; batteries are amazing; graphical processing units are powerful yet cheap;even the original technology Microsoft built just for HoloLens, the Holographic Processing Unit (HPU), could be built to higher levels of power at lower cost and in shorter time than such chips have ever been built before. In short, the world of technology has been digitally disrupted not just in one area, but in every area. Combine all of those innovations into a single area of focus, as Microsoft has done, and boom, you find yourself five years into the future.

I’m not sure I’d want to be the executive sticking his neck out saying this is the next big thing, given the relative failures with similar products.

This is why companies are constantly catching up. They were afraid to embrace social media and are still struggling to get up to speed on mobile. Think of it this way: A HoloLens video Microsoft posted on YouTube has been viewed more than 12 million times. Many of those viewers are the people below you in your company, and your customers. And then there are your executive peers and your board of directors. They carry around their iPads with some pride, but they are uncertain of where to put their attention next. All of these people will be looking for the executive that can stand up and offer a plan for preparing for a future of holographic computing.

So what’s that plan?

You’ll immediately face reasonable questions from inside the company like: Have we as a brand spent the time to understand what customers really need? Have we used the shift to web, social, and mobile to become experts in rapid product development techniques? The answer is likely no, not completely, or only somewhat. That’s why preparing for holographic computing isn’t really about building holograms, not in 2015, and for many not even in 2016. Instead, you will prepare for holographic computing by finally bringing your company culture, policies and practices into alignment with a customer-first strategy for innovation.